Switching to on-line Payslips - Best Practice

Background

A key element of the ESR Development Roadmap was the enhancements made to the employee pay advice, including:

• One consistent view for both printed and on-line versions for all users of the pay advice;
• Ability for employees to access their pay advice directly from their Portal page;
• Employee access to their pay advice from the internet and on mobile devices;
• The ability for organisations and employees to make a choice to stop the production of the printed payslips.

The use of on-line pay advice has grown significantly as a result of these developments:

• In September, 43,251 unique employees accessed their on-line pay advice from the Payslip portlet. A further 177,154 accessed their pay advice from within their Employee Self Service access;
• The proportion of employees on ESR who have now opted out of receiving a paper payslip has now increased to 15.6% – 283,207 employees - at the end of September 2017;
• 60 organisations, as at the end of September, have now taken the decision to stop the printing of paper payslips at organisational level;
• Other organisations have not opted out at a global level – but within those organisations, 88,373 employees have made the choice to opt out of a paper payslip themselves.

Benefits to Employing Organisations

The scope of benefits – both organisationally and for employees include:

• The timely delivery of the on-line pay advice prior to payday for employees to view;
• Employees being able to access their pay advice at any time whether at work, at home, or on the move via their mobile device;
• Previous pay advice are available, within the current employment, if the employee needs to reference them for mortgage applications, etc.;
• Reduced costs by no longer needing to distribute paper payslips and P60s;
• Reducing the risk of and breaches of confidentiality associated with manually distributing printed payslips and P60s around locations and departments;
• The reduction in the use of paper and carbon footprint is a key benefit for many organisations.

Implications of System Unavailability

Any IT solution the size and complexity of ESR is always going to require system unavailability to undertake both system developments and essential maintenance. The scheduling of such downtime is always considered from a user/business impact perspective, recognising it has a direct impact on the operation of the solution at local organisational level.. However, the drive to increase employee access – particularly with the increased flexibility and range of access channels – places greatest emphasis on the impact of solution unavailability.

One of the key considerations when planning solution unavailability is the data available to the Programme from organisational Payroll Calendars – which is why it is essential that organisations complete and update them. 

Extended periods of system downtime, and in particular the quarterly major releases, are normally at the end of the month, primarily to take into account the following:

• Downtime planning attempts to avoid clashes with payroll processing. Analysis of data shows that the last weekend of the month has fewer processes running than at other times in the period;
• Payroll processing is busy on the first weekend of the month, during the 3^rd week of the month and on occasion up to a few working days before month end;
• To prevent issues with partial payroll processing, solution changes are usually effective from the first few days of the following pay period. Therefore, deploying solution changes at the end of the month, as far as possible, will reduce unwanted/significant Retropay and/or part period issues that may arise if they are applied mid-period and after the effective date.

How Should Organisations Manage the Impact of Planned Unavailability?

To ensure that employees are able to view their on-line pay advice at a time that is convenient to them, consideration will need to be given to the impact of any system downtime which will prevent access. Such planned downtime is always communicated in advance.

As most monthly pay dates fall near to system downtime, best practice would be to ensure that the payslips are available to view as soon as possible after the final payroll run. Using the on-line Payslip View means that the on-line pay advice can be available to employees up to 3 days before their pay day.

Communication, as in many scenarios, is key, and it is advisable to communicate periods of unavailability directly to your employees. Whilst, as a Programme we will look to maximise the channels open to us, we would strongly recommend the use of the Announcements functionality available to organisations from within the Portal. This will enable organisations to tailor the messaging for their own employees – including references to pay dates, pay advice availability dates and the actual downtime start and end details.

Following the above steps will ensure that staff are able to view their payslips in a timely manner, empower Payroll/HR departments to assist with resolving pay queries in advance of  pay day and reduce any impact that system downtime may have on the employee.

Guidance on how to set up when the payslips will be available on-line can be found in the ESR User Manual: http://portal.mhapp.nhs.uk/esrusermanual/html/NAVU480.htm

If you are considering switching to on-line payslips, you can read about the experiences of another user organisation that has done this. Go to the Case Study section of this edition of ESR News.